With global overpopulation neatly intertwining with the advent of the home video camera, we have been afforded, as a species, several near-miracles. For instance, when supersonic jets explode, or when mobs impolitely loot and riot in urban centers, the common consumer can now document the event and sell it to the networks for our collective edification. Endless streams of babies are now able to grow up secure in the knowledge that their every burp and blemish has been captured in real time, making it possible for them to peruse their own personal evolution. But most significantly, the video camera and the chaos of the modern world have given Lars von Trier the opportunity to make us all seasick while self-indulgently flogging our emotions with a great big hambone. Nowhere is this phenomenon more apparent than in the celebrated Danish director's new abomination, the insanely sloppy but undeniably energetic Dancer in the Dark.

Once one overcomes the powerful urge to ring up Mr. von Trier and introduce him to wild new concepts such as "tripod," "dolly" and "Steadicam," (as well as "script" and "logic," but we'll save these tiny quips for later), it becomes marginally possible to settle into his latest effort, a thudding and profoundly nonsensical tear-jerker set (rather arbitrarily) in an imaginary America (a country, word has it, that von Trier has never actually visited, but fair enough -- odds are, George Lucas has never been to Naboo, either). It's 1962 in a small town in Washington state, and a symbol of feminine determination and innocence by the name of Selma (pop singer Björk, who, for the record, rhymes with "smirk," not "fork") has arrived from Czechoslovakia to starve pathetically with her hopeful 10-year-old son, Gene (Vladica Kostic).

Perhaps the lessons in Cockney dialect cost her a pretty penny (the chanteuse herself has commented that her accent is "pretty fucked"), or perhaps finding employment in the only sheet metal shop in lumber country exhausted her resources, but for whatever reason, Selma and son are forced to squat in a little shack on the property of struggling policeman Bill (Dave Morse) and his spendthrift wife, Linda (Cara Seymour), who are basically a Ward-and-June unit with the denial showing. Oh yeah, and Selma is going blind.

Info

Dancer in the Dark

Rated R

When she's not risking life and limb banging out stainless steel sinks (or risking delirium staying up nights carding hairpins), Selma focuses on her life's one true passion -- senseless self-sacrifice. Oops, make that musicals -- that's right, musicals -- because "nothing dreadful ever happens" in them. (This peculiar opinion is shared by von Trier in the press notes. Do they not have access to Sondheim in Europe?)

A creature of joy and light and wonder and rainbows trapped in an austere, oppressive environment, Selma lives for musicals, a passion she shares with her equally dialectically challenged friend and co-worker, Kathy (Catherine Deneuve). When Selma isn't busily staving off the utterly unmotivated advances of local yokel Jeff (Peter Stormare), she and Kathy attend musicals at the local cinema, where, to the annoyance of other audience members who "paid good money" to get in, Kathy provides a running commentary on the imagery Selma's failing eyes can no longer see. In some of the very few plausible (and genuinely moving) dramatic sequences, Kathy also aids Selma in their rehearsals of an amateur production of The Sound of Music, in which the gibbering, thick-skulled simpleton portrays a very unlikely Maria.

The thrust of the drama -- such that it is -- comes from Selma's unhappy dilemma. She has grown comfortable with her encroaching blindness, but she cannot accept a similar fate for Gene. "In Czechoslovakia, I saw a film," she explains to her neighbors, "and they were eating candy from a tin just like this, and I was thinking how wonderful it must be in the United States!"

When Bill and Linda give her the container of Almond Roca, she uses it to conceal her paltry stash of cash, which she's been socking away to pay for Gene's operation -- a vague situation she steadfastly refuses to explain to anyone, not even her son. Criticized for being a Communist and browbeaten for being a bad mother (despite her affection for her bountiful new homeland, she takes no joy in her son's receiving a shiny new bicycle), Selma's life becomes a sort of monomania, to work her fingers to the bone, so that her son might see.

Of course, if this all worked out, we'd have soap opera melodrama but no movie, so von Trier has spiked the punch with ridiculous and volatile plot points. First, during a solemn tête-à-tête in which Selma and Bill share their secrets (her blind ambition, his bankruptcy), a neighborly trust is obscenely violated. Second, when Selma is forced to confront Bill and regain her savings, the scene erupts into a preposterous rush of violence that could be called silly, hilarious, ghastly, confusing, or just plain dumb -- anything but believable. At this point, the intrepid viewer may either leave, or discard all hope for accountability and common sense. Those who stay will be pummeled with von Trier's emotional cudgel, plus a bushel and a peck of belting and whimpering from Björk.

To her credit, Björk definitely holds the movie together, and while she's about as much of an actress as Bruce Willis is a pop star, her natural charisma and the overwhelming intensity of her emotions should blind a lot of viewers to the ludicrousness of the story and the rotten videography by veteran D.P. Robby Müller (known for his work with Jim Jarmusch, Alex Cox and Wim Wenders). Truly, it is a crying shame that the musical segments in Dancer in the Dark were not preserved in Cinemascope and Technicolor, because they're not only the best parts of the movie (brilliantly choreographed by Vincent Patterson, who has helped Madonna and Michael Jackson get a groove on), they are, in both senses, moving pieces of art. Björk is in complete control when she's singing and dancing. Likewise, the sequences aboard the freight train and in the courtroom (the latter featuring a delightful appearance by Joel Grey) are simply glorious. But in the end, the movie just feels like an exercise in irony-free sadism, an endurance test for oversaturated psyches.

Established as a global superstar of cinema (with the Palme d'Or for this mess indicating that the French are sometimes a few slices short of a baguette), von Trier is a master of provocation, but he's often a weakling in terms of substance, throwing ugly tantrums rather than romancing us with ingenious miseries. If von Trier were to put down the multiple Panasonics and pick up a Panavision, we might get a chance to experience more of his vision, behind the blurry muck and distortion. As Björk said in a press conference, "Most of the world is driven by the eye; they design cities to look great, but they sound terrible." In like fashion, von Trier designs his works to scratch our souls (and, sometimes, as in Breaking the Waves or The Kingdom and its sequel, they leave lasting scars), but without a crackling ghost story or a powerful actor like Emily Watson, his work starts to feel bloated, self-important and boring.